31000/2 in Ankeny: A Crew Chief’s Decision Tree for Alignment Arms

When a racing team crew chief in Ankeny called us about outfitting their shop bay for alignment work, the first real fork in the road wasn’t the brand, it was whether the 31000/2 should be configured with symmetric or asymmetric arms. That single decision changes how a car sits on the lift, how much clearance you get for alignment equipment, and whether your team can turn cars around fast between practice sessions. We walk teams through this decision constantly, and it always starts with budget before it gets to configuration, so that’s exactly how we’ll lay it out here.

Step One: What’s the Actual Budget Ceiling

Every decision tree starts with money, and the 31000/2 comes in more than one price band depending on arm configuration, control package, and installation complexity. Racing teams in Ankeny working with tighter equipment budgets often default to symmetric arm setups because they’re generally the lower-cost configuration and they get the vehicle up in the air reliably for basic service work. If your budget ceiling is firm and alignment precision isn’t the daily priority, symmetric arms on a 31000/2 solve most of your lifting needs without stretching the budget further.

But if alignment work is a core part of what your crew does week to week, the calculus changes immediately. Asymmetric arm configurations cost more, both in the base unit and sometimes in the runway or clearance requirements around the bay, but they’re built specifically to position the vehicle for better technician access to wheels and suspension points. We tell every crew chief the same thing before they commit budget: decide what the lift’s primary job is first, because that answer determines whether the extra cost of asymmetric arms is money well spent or money you didn’t need to spend.

Step Two: How Often Does Alignment Work Happen

Once budget is set, the next branch in the decision tree is frequency. If alignment work happens on nearly every car that comes through your bay between races, an asymmetric arm configuration on the 31000/2 earns its keep fast. Asymmetric arms are designed to swing the front arms further forward and rear arms further back, which opens up wheel access and gives your alignment equipment a clean line of sight without the arms or lift columns getting in the way of sensors and targets.

If alignment is occasional, maybe once every few weeks between other maintenance work, a symmetric configuration on the same 31000/2 base unit still gets the job done. You’ll deal with slightly more arm repositioning to clear wheel access during alignment checks, but for a crew that isn’t doing it daily, that extra few minutes per session doesn’t justify the cost jump. We’ve set up Ankeny race shops both ways depending on how their season schedule actually runs, and the honest answer is frequency of use should drive this decision more than preference.

Step Three: Bay Width and Column Placement

The next fork depends on your actual bay dimensions. Asymmetric arm configurations on a 31000/2 typically need the columns set at a specific offset relative to the vehicle centerline to get the geometry benefit that makes wheel access easier. If your Ankeny shop bay is narrow or shares wall space with other equipment, that offset placement can be tight or outright impossible without reworking the bay layout.

Symmetric configurations are more forgiving here because the column placement is centered and predictable regardless of what alignment equipment you’re running around it. We’ve measured more than a few race shop bays where the team wanted asymmetric arms on paper, but the physical bay dimensions pushed them back toward symmetric because there simply wasn’t clearance for the ideal asymmetric column offset. Always measure your actual bay, including clearance for your alignment rack or camera targets, before locking in configuration on a 31000/2 order.

Step Four: What Vehicles Are You Actually Lifting

Race teams don’t always run one vehicle type, and this matters more than people expect when choosing between symmetric and asymmetric arms. If your team rotates between different chassis with significantly different wheelbases and track widths, asymmetric arm configurations on the 31000/2 tend to adapt better because the arm reach and pad placement flexibility handles a wider range of vehicle geometry without recalibrating every single time.

If your team runs a consistent single chassis platform race after race, symmetric arms configured once for that specific wheelbase can actually be faster in practice, because your crew isn’t repositioning arms differently car to car. We’ve seen Ankeny teams running spec series cars stick with symmetric setups precisely because the consistency of a single chassis platform means there’s no adaptability advantage to asymmetric arms worth paying for. Know your fleet before you decide.

Step Five: Turnaround Speed Between Sessions

For a crew chief, time between sessions is often the real currency, more than raw lift capacity. Asymmetric arms on a 31000/2 generally give faster wheel access once the car is up because the arms are out of the way of the wheel wells more cleanly, which shaves seconds off every alignment check across a full session’s worth of cars. Multiply that across a race weekend and the time savings add up in a way that’s hard to see in a single lift cycle but very real over a full event.

Symmetric arms require slightly more repositioning to clear wheels fully for alignment sensor placement, which isn’t a dealbreaker for occasional checks but does add up during high-cycle race weekends when every car needs a quick alignment verification between runs. If your team is measuring success in seconds per car across dozens of cycles a weekend, that’s a strong argument for asymmetric arms on your 31000/2, even at the higher upfront cost.

Step Six: Installation and Anchoring in a Race Shop

Regardless of which arm configuration you land on, the 31000/2 still needs proper anchoring into the shop floor, and race shop floors are sometimes older or thinner than a commercial shop slab built specifically for lift loads. We always recommend a floor inspection before committing to configuration, because asymmetric arm setups sometimes shift load distribution across the columns differently than symmetric setups, and that matters for anchor bolt pattern and torque spec compliance.